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From: devine@shodha.dec.com (Bob Devine)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: International time zones
Message-ID: <392@shodha.dec.com>
Date: 24 Aug 89 23:24:54 GMT
References: <993@ks.UUCP> <383@shodha.dec.com> <1043@riddle.UUCP> <89Aug22.153031edt.10647@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp. - Colorado Springs, CO.
Lines: 38


  Here is the official list of standard timezones.  There are
two ways of naming the timezone -- zone numbers and zone letters.
Negative zone numbers are east of 0 degrees latitude (the Prime
Meridian); positive numbers are west (note: this is opposite the
Unix convention).

   Degrees     EAST    EAST        WEST    WEST
   East/West   zone    zone        zone    zone   (N. American
   of 0 long.  number  letter      number  letter  zone names)
       0         0       Z           0       Z
      15        -1       A           1       N
      30        -2       B           2       O
      45        -3       C           3       P
      60        -4       D           4       Q (Atlantic ST)
      75        -5       E           5       R (Eastern ST)
      90        -6       F           6       S (Central ST)
     105        -7       G           7       T (Mountain ST)
     120        -8       H           8       U (Pacific ST)
     135        -9       I           9       V (Yukon ST)
     150       -10       K          10       W (Alaska-Hawaii ST)
     165       -11       L          11       X (Bering ST)
     180       -12       M          12       Y

  Note that there is no `j' zone.  In addition to the above 24 zones,
there are some country-specific `timezones'.  The Newfoundland
province is at +3 1/2; Venezuela is at +5 1/2; India uses -5 1/2;
and Iran uses -3 1/2.  For the really different consider that
Saudi Arabia follows its own rule for setting clocks by using the
time at sundown as midnight; Afghanistan may still (unless the
Soviet invasion forced a change) use a time that is -4 hourse 26 minutes
from UTC.  There are probably other exceptions too.

  All names given to the timezones are very country- and language-
specific.  On the coincidental matching of zone names (such as for
the USA and Canada), the zones are still different due to the
handling of daylight saving time rules.

Bob Devine